First up is my interior leather install from Leatherseats.com.

I ordered a full interior kit in dark charcoal with camel brown perforated inserts. I got contrast stitching in "Dune" color, which is the closest mmatch they had to the stock ivory interior. I also had them send me some extra thread and vinyl in each color so that I can wrap my door panel inserts and other interior trim.

Fortunately, one of my friends runs an upholstery shop. So we're tackling the installation ourselves. Not at all easy... tons of knuckle-busting pinching, twisting and clipping. Fun stuff, though.

Here's the kit all laid out:

And here's my friend doing the hard work of removing the stock covers:

While he was busting *** to put the new covers on, I tackled the grueling job of refitting all the headrests:

Work in progress on the driver's seat:

And here she is installed:

All in all, I'm really pleased so far. We ran out of time and were only able to get the driver's seat done - so I won't get to the rest until after the holidays. But I can kind of envision how the color scheme will work in the full interior and I really dig it.

I'll update in the next couple weeks as I get it all finished.

 

Since this is now my build-thread, I figure I'll re-post my knock-off hella supertones install. These were ebay generics that I got for about 25 bucks and then spray-painted a rad green color. Because racecar. I think they sound great.

 

Got the passenger seat done last night - they look way better as a pair!

 

Did my rear seats yesterday. Once I figured out how to get them out of the car, adding the new covers was a cinch.

The lower seat cushion is just all hog rings... so many hog rings...

The rear seat uppers/backs just slip over basically like the fronts do. They were really easy to cover/clip.


Here's the finished result:

One thing to note, if you do decide to go with aftermarket covers it will be difficult to put your rear seat back protectors back on. The new fabric is just too thick for the clips to reach through and stay fastened. So I just put mine on with self-tapping sheet metal screws. Pro stuff.

 

My latest update was to add a Wheelskins steering wheel cover.

 

Where your arm rest in the rear seat

 

The US Premium trim doesn't have a rear seat fold-down/armrest.

 

^^ Subscribed for updates! This looks great.

 

Sweet ! That French fry mod must be adding some serious HP ! Lol

Interior looks good !

 

Ha, totally. Almost as much as my stickers and various scratches...

Not my car, but the GF was jelly of my sexy steering wheel cover so I pimpified her ride with a euro-perf Wheelskins as well. She digs it.

 

I worked some more on my interior this weekend. Next task up was trying to do some vinyl wrap on my door inserts to match the custom seats. I learned quite a few lessons.

1. When it's too cold outside to stand being in your garage, it's perfectly safe to spraypaint things in your poorly ventilated but well-heated laundry room.
2. The big fabric-covered panels in the doors are, unfortunately, not separate pieces... they're just a molded shape in the overall plastic door panel. Which means vinyl wrapping them is nearly impossible. Stupid Subaru...
3. There's no reason anyone should ever do this. Halfway through I suffered a really depressing bout of "What the hell was I thinking?"

That said, I'm almost there...

The easy part (and part that turned out really well) was spraying the door handles/switch covers with graphite grey vinyl spray. I put on a few coats of adhesion promoter and then 3-4 light coats of the vinyl and they turned out smooth and beautiful!

Next step was vinyl-wrapping the arm rests in some matching dark graphite vinyl that the leatherseats guys sent me. This stuff isn't easy to work with. You basically strip off the existing plastic/vinyl cover, cut out a pattern, spray 3M adhesive on both the inside of the vinyl cover and on the armrest/foam, then stick it on and start trying to stretch it around the shape. The tough bend at the end left me with a lot of wrinkles, but overall it doesn't bother me much.

Then comes the door panels... Oy this was a pain in the ***. You have to strip off the existing fabric (without tearing up too much of the foam underneath), then cut out a pattern in the new vinyl, then mask off as much of the door as possible (which sucks because nothing will stick to it... even duct tape barely adhered) and spray down the door panel/foam with 3M spray adhesive. As such:

Then you have to stick on the new vinyl and pain-stakingly wedge the edges down into the seam around the panel and cut out the excess with an xacto knife. The end result is inevitably a jagged edge that's visible down in the groove of the seam... Nevertheless, I got them all done.

Since those lines/seams around the brown leather inserts are really crappy looking, I order some automotive piping/welt from these guys. I figure if I glue in a line of welt around that seam, it'll both hide the jagged edge and keep it securely in place. We'll see...

 

That's a nice look!

 

looking good. i wonder if you could post some more pics of the exterior when you get a chance. and i'm wondering if you plasti dipped anything more than the grille? I'm just trying to get a look at the MPB with some plasti-dip treatment, cheers.

 

could you post a pic of your "save the manuals" decal?? I'd love to add that onto my xv if I like the look

 

Yep, yep. I'll snap some exterior pics in the next day or two. I currently have the XV in the garage because the interior is still all pulled apart. I hope to have it put back together this weekend. Trying to figure out how I want to do my shift boot, center console, and ebrake boot. This is what my coffee table looks like at the moment...

I haven't dipped anything other than the grille. Here's a slightly better shot of it (with my old horns):

Curiously, this is the only other exterior pic I can find of my car (next to my GF's SWP in the back yard):

And for a little extra pleasure, here's my other ride:

 

Finish up my remaining interior pieces and put the car back together this weekend. I'm terrible at vinyl-wrapping... lots of wrinkles. But overall, I'm happy with the way everything turned out. Pics:

So much cutting, stitching, tearing out of poorly sewn stitches, re-stitching, more cutting, gluing, stretching, etc:

Shift boot:

Doors:

Various other interior shots:

And here's a pic of my "Save the Manuals" sticker. It was hard to get a good shot - I had it made at vistaprint.com; it sticks on the interior of the glass facing outward, so camera glare is a pain. Anyways, it's subtle behind the tint of the glass.

 

Keep it up. The gun metal plasti - dip looks good. I'm going to dip mine and I'm thinking one of camo colors for my DK. It's good to see someone try something other than black.

 

I figure I'll start a member journal for my ride.


Comprehensive yet ever-growing list of random crap I've bolted, glued or clipped onto my car:
- OEM Door Window Visors
- OEM Front Hood Deflector
- OEM Rear Bumper Cover
- OEM Rear Seatback Protector
- OEM All-Weather Floormats
- OEM Leather shift knob
- Leatherseats.com custom leather interior
- Wheelskins euro-perf steering wheel cover
- Epic custom-made "Save the Manuals" window decal
- Full interior LED bulb replacements, license plate lights too
- Plasti-dipped front grille (Gunmetal Gray)
- Custom-painted Knock-off Hella Supertone horns
- Apexi drop-in air filter
- Removed the secondary emissions air filter (the activated carbon filter)
- Polk speakers: 6.5s in all four doors and tweeters up front
- Dynamat sound-deadening (in the doors)
- Chemical Guys M-Sealant paint protection / Collinite Wax
- Custom front-bumper license plate w/ FlexyFrame bracket
- Curt Tow Hitch
- Subaru ownership badges (yep, really)
- A french fry that fell between the driver's seat and center console that I can't get out
- Those little rubber mat things from ebay that you put in the bottom of all the cup holders and cubbies
- An ugly gouge/crack in my speaker grille on the front passenger door where I got mad and punched it.

Can you elaborate on this please? I'm not familiar with that part or what removing it may do.

 

Well, behind the replaceable air filter in the stock air box there's another permanent-filter that's secured in with molded plastic clips. That secondary filter looks like white batting with a layer of chunks of activated carbon behind it (kind of like what you'd see in an aquarium filter). Somehow it helps with emissions. I just ripped it out of my car.

I don't think not having it makes any noticeable difference in the performance of the engine/amount of air coming in, but somehow I just feel better knowing it's not there restricting whatever marginal airflow it make have been restricting.

 

Thanks to rlouie's guide, I was able to successfully install a used OEM underseat sub over the weekend. Doesn't really add that much to the overall "thump" of my speaker set-up, but it definitely fills out the bass a bit and gives the stereo a richer sound.

 

Had a nice warm day on Sunday, so I got out and gave the ole girl a bath and detailed the interior. Lookin' kleeeeeen.

 

A couple more. I'm impressed with how well my p-dipped grille has held up through the winter.

 

I had some of my friends over this weekend for a car-wash-cookout Sunday. My backyard has never looked so sexy:

 

I'm re-posting some of my old DIYs here to consolidate things. Here are my tweeter upgrades:

I bought a pair of pretty decent Polk tweeters during the "friends and family" sale last weekend. They sound fantastic. I snapped some pics while I was putting them in - figured I'd post it here in case it helps anyone. It's fairly easy to replace the stock tweeters with 1" aftermarket tweeters and use the existing hardware. In my opinion, this is better sound than the kicker upgrade at half the cost.

Step 1 is to "gut" the old speaker - tear out the cone and pry the magnet off the bracket. Doesn't matter if you mangle the bracket, you'll be putting the new tweeters' cups in there. Just try to salvage the white clip & wires. The white clip is just glued to the bottom of the stock speaker magnet. Pry it off with a screwdriver, cut the wires where they're soldered to the speaker, and you're good to go.


"Gutted" Mount:

Stock Connector:

Then just fit the new speaker cup inside your gutted mount. If it's a 1" tweeter, the cup will probably fall right in and fit perfectly. Use whatever hardware came with the cup to secure it to the mount. The pics below show the hardware that came with the Polk tweeters.


Cup in Mount:

Back Bracket:

From there, just lead the wires from the tweeter through the holes in the cup/mount and then pop in the tweeter (or screw it in, however your tweeter secures to the cup).

Next step is to strip the ends of the black and white wires on the adapter/clip you salvaged and splice them into the positive and negative wires on the tweeter.

Then you just clip the connector back together, plop the mount back into its space in the dash, screw her down, and rock the heck out.

 

Haven't updated this in a while.

Forum member Akparian sold me his old custom exhaust a couple months ago. It's pretty neat - axle-back set-up w/ a much smaller-than-stock muffler that gives off a good sound.

I sanded it down to get some rust off then painted it with high-heat rustoleum spray before install. It gives the XV a nice grumble at idle and under heavy throttle. It also butts right up against my hitch, so I get a nice "makes your pants feel funny" vibration throughout the whole car. My girlfriend loves it (hey-ooo!).